


Adventures in Parenting

by ireallyhatecornnuts (CharleyFoxtrot)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Kidfic, M/M, domesticfic, giftfic, parenthood into relationship, rating for language not sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 23:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharleyFoxtrot/pseuds/ireallyhatecornnuts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adventures in <s>Babysitting</s> Parenting</p><p>“<i>Cas</i> is the one who wants to go all Daddy Day Care. I’m just an advisor.”</p><p>Castiel refuses to turn one of his newly-human brethren into Child Protective Services, leaving he and Dean to play Dad and...well, Dad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adventures in Parenting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frecklesarechocolate (onlybritainisgreat)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=frecklesarechocolate+%28onlybritainisgreat%29).



> This is the now-beta'd giftfic for [deanhugchester](http://deanhugchester.tumblr.com/)/[frecklesarechocolate](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frecklesarechocolate/pseuds/frecklesarechocolate). I got it up on her birthday, but now it's all pretty and downloadable! Jess, you rock. 
> 
> Man, I never thought I'd write kidfic. Whooooops.
> 
> Much thanks to [mischievousart](http://mischievousart.tumblr.com/) for an exemplary beta. You rock my English-language world, bro.
> 
> A huge thanks to my friend Keri, who is a mother and walked me through the first year and a half of an infant's life so that I'd have some knowledge for this fic. I'm more along the lines of Charlie's reaction (in this fic, anyway) when it comes to children, so it was very helpful.
> 
> As usual, you can find me at my tumblr, disease-danger-darkness-silence.tumblr.com.

It’s by accident that they find him, during a hunt gone wrong in Tennessee.

Really, _really_ wrong.

When the angels fell, it was a crapshoot whether or not their _grace_ fell too. Cas and Kevin couldn’t figure out any sort of correlation between the reports of miracle trees and shit, and what kind of angel the grace came from; it seemed the vast majority of those that fell from Heaven left their grace at home when they did it, cherub and seraph alike.

Still, every now and then a report would come in, courtesy one of the Winchester’s growing network of hunters, vesselled ex-angels, and those in the know - usually former victims. This report would invariably discuss one thing and one thing only - a sudden miracle that had happened on a particular night, just about a year ago.

They pulled into Lebanon, Tennessee - which Dean found _hilarious_ \- just after midnight, booking two rooms at an inexplicably casino-themed motel and crashing _hard_. The next morning they broke up into teams: Sam and Kevin headed up to the library to check the microfilms (seriously, _microfilms_ ) of the newspaper’s birth announcements. There had been several angels that fell near here, most of whom had made contact with them or their network already, but only _one_ miracle.

Dean and Castiel went to see where the grace had fallen.

By all accounts it had been an ordinary pond, largeish and even sporting _fish_ , up until Heaven’s gates slammed shut early last May. Overnight, the fish disappeared (Cas theorized that the entry of angelic grace had vaporized all of them; Kevin, back to his vegan ways, had spared a moment to mourn the dead fish), but the water began mysteriously healing the townsfolk. A man with terminal cancer had asked to visit the spot for sentimental reasons, and as a sort of last-chance sendoff his family had obliged, even carting his mostly-dead ass down to the water so he could dangle his feet in it.

The next day he was completely cured, all signs of cancer _gone_.

Two weeks later, a woman who’d been blind since birth went swimming and suddenly developed sight mid-stroke.

The very next day a paraplegic teenager fell off the dock with his wheelchair. As his mother desperately tried to save him, he suddenly kicked free and began treading water of his own accord.

After that it was nine months of madness as everyone tried to be - and _succeeded_ at being - miraculously cured. Nine months to the day the angels fell, the pond stopped healing people, just as quickly as it had begun.

Nine months, just enough time for a record number of miracle babies to be born, the product of angels without vessels, falling from Heaven.

And now here it was, and those miracle babies were just about three months old, and one of them seemed to have attracted their grace back, because the pond was just as quiescent as it had been before the Fall.

The pond was a bust; they couldn’t even spot the place where the grace had been, let alone who it might have belonged to, and it was a dispirited Castiel that Dean ushered back into their stupid room with cavorting card suits on the walls. Cas took up the poor twisted me emo look so quickly that Dean mentally wondered if Sam would switch with him; he was _really_ starting to resent the standing safety rule of, “One Winchester per room.” Because honestly, Cas was just as good a shot as Sam was these days, and Dean could tolerate Kevin’s snark if it would give him an escape from a depressed ex-angel.

About an hour later there was a knock on the door; Cas didn’t even glance up from where he was sitting on the edge of his bed, glaring at Loony Toons. Dean sighed, rolled his eyes, and answered the door.

“Fucking _finally_ ,” he pronounced, stepping aside so Sam and Kevin (bearing file folders and fast food) could step past him. “He’s been brooding.”

“I take it you didn’t find anything,” Sam said, overriding Castiel’s butthurt, “I am not _brooding_ ,” and Kevin’s laughter.

“Not a damn thing,” Dean said, gesturing the two of them toward the table before taking a seat on his own bed. “Pond’s as average as could be. The fish are back, by the way, Kevin.”

“Yippee,” Kevin said, his expression deadpan.

Dean _may_ have been teasing him about the fish. Just a little. For funzies.

“What’d you guys find?” Dean asked, changing the subject.

“The week surrounding the nine month anniversary had about twenty babies born in this area,” Sam said, handing Dean the file folder. “Three were born _directly_ on the nine-month mark so I figured we’d check them first. Only one’s left in town, though - one of them, a little girl, died when she was a month old. Crib death.”

There was a moment of silence at that.

“And then the other wasn’t actually from around here - his parents were driving through and his mom went into severe premature labor. He’s still in the NICU at Nashville, prognosis is good, he’s set to be released next week.”

“Where are his parents from?” Dean asked, skimming the other results.

“Dallas, Texas. No way they could have been around for the Fall, so it looks like it’s just the one kid.”

“Huh,” Dean squinted; Sam’s face went tight, and quickly he realized why. This kid had the most unfortunate name in Winchester history.

“Adam Moore,” Kevin supplied. He was peering with suspicion at a salad kit. “Three months old, obviously. Parents are William and Keisha Moore, both 24 years old.” He shrugged, squinted at the salad one last time, and shoveled a lettuce leaf in his mouth. His resultant grimace spoke to the quality.

“Keisha works in the deli at the local Wal-Mart,” Sam said. He handed Dean one of the bags of food. “William works part-time as a janitor at Cumberland University at night while attending the university during the day.”

“Nice,” Dean commented, digging a burger out of the bag. “So what are we going to do? Check this kid out? Can we even _tell_ if he’s fallen?”

“I might be able to sense something,” Castiel said. He’d brightened considerably since Sam and Kevin arrived. “If he’s somehow re-absorbed his grace, I’d likely be able to tell.”

“Well, then,” Dean said, biting into the burger before continuing to talk with his mouth full - a habit that annoyed both Sam _and_ Kevin and therefore he continued meticulously. He grinned. “What’s our best bet with them?”

Sam sighed. “I don’t really want to go this route, but probably Child Protective Services.” At Dean’s questioning look, he explained. “It’s a low-income area and the family’s black. It’s probably the best cover we have. I don’t have to like it, though.”

Kevin made a face. “Yeah, _that’s_ not racist at all.”

“Hey, if you wanna dismantle the patriarchy or whatever, fine, but we gotta work with the system we got until then,” Dean said, standing up and dusting his hands off on his jeans.

“That’s _feminism_ ,” Kevin objected.

“ _That’s_ shit I don’t have time to worry about right now,” Dean replied, pointing at him. He jerked that hand back, gesturing toward Cas. “For now, I gotta outfit Angel Be Good in office casual.”

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

Cas looked _really good_ in office casual.

Which Dean totally didn’t notice, of course.

Still, the blue button-down and black slacks were a whole helluva lot different than his old angel getup, and _especially_ different from what he wore these days (which, more often than not, tended toward Dean’s castoffs and shit scrounged from Salvation Army. Cas refused to purchase new clothes and had, in fact, fought with Dean over buying the officeworker garb off the Target clearance racks).

“Alright, we’ll drop you off at the apartment block,” Sam said. He was sitting in the passenger seat; Kevin was behind the wheel, much to Dean’s displeasure, but he had to admit that the prophet wasn’t a half-bad driver. “You check the kid out, try and make it look official.”

Kevin and Sam were going to check in with an angelic contact they had in the area; Nuriel might have sensed something too, and if Adam Moore wasn’t a go on their angel-o-meter maybe the old cherub would have some other leads.

This plan ground to a screeching halt when the front door of the very apartment they were going to check on blew open and off as they pulled up to the building. Sam’s eyes flew wide and he shoved the laptop he’d had out over, drawing his gun from the back of his jeans as he slid out of the Impala in a move so smooth it looked like he’d practiced it.

(The sad reality is that he _had_ \- on numerous other hunts.)

Dean and Cas both mimicked him, only at a more sedate pace as they had to climb over each other to pile out of the back passenger-side door.

They didn’t bother waiting, which was probably unsound from a tactical standpoint but there was a child, a _human child_ , at risk and it was a child that may or may not be one of Castiel’s fallen siblings and well -

The idiot went and barged in on a potential _situation_ without checking with Dean and Sam first.

Dean swore and darted in after him with little thought, leaving his brother uttering expletives behind him (and Kevin calling out, “I guess I’ll just wait here...”) as he checked the corridor leading from the front door.

He almost ran into Cas; the other man was frozen and with good reason, Dean realized, as he took in the scene.

The living room was _destroyed_. William and Keisha Moore lay on the ground, bleeding out from deliberate gashes to their necks; Keisha stared up at Dean, her lips trying to form words, but he could tell from here that her vocal cords were severed.

He was balls at lip-riding but he could just barely make out, “baby,” and “Adam,” and _yeah_ , this was gonna go down in the book as one of the worst things he’d ever had to witness, outside of his own mother’s death.

His attention was drawn to the center of the room. It probably should have been drawn there in the first place, but hey, _dead parents_. He was a little bit distracted.

A demon - obvious by the eyes and the blood pouring out of her side which _wasn’t_ killing her - smiled back at him. “Mmm, I rate Winchesters? How _flattering_.”

Sam came up behind him, gun drawn, and he froze; Dean could feel him taking in the scene, the same as he had seconds before.

“I hate to cut and run,” the demon said, smirking and nudging William’s body with her toe, “But I have an angel baby to tend to. Should I send him your regards?” and she mock-pouted at Castiel, fluttering her eyelashes.

Cas snarled quietly.

Dean reached toward his waistband, where he had Ruby’s knife tucked away securely. He drew it, out of the demon’s sight from where he was positioned (almost directly behind Cas), and pressed it into Castiel’s hand.

“You stop her, I’ll grab the kid,” he muttered. This was no archdemon, no Abaddon or Crowley; Cas and Sam could take it. He, on the other hand, had some experience with saving infants.

As if on cue, a wailing noise came from down the hall. Dean froze; the demon did as well before staring to move, and Dean bolted. He had luck on his side - he was closer - _and_ he didn’t have Cas and Sam barring his path.

He reached the nursery out of breath; the devastation of the apartment, luckily, hadn’t reached the hallway, but it must have disturbed Adam, because he was fussing.

“Sorry about this, kid,” Dean informed the infant, scooping him up and just barely remembering in time that at three months old, Adam wouldn’t have the neck support to keep his head from flopping around. There was a screaming noise from the hallway and Dean cupped the baby to his chest, turning away from the door to put his back in between the baby and the entrance to the room, bracing for impact.

Then, dead silence. Dean blinked his eyes open, almost sheepishly glancing down at the kid, who blinked back up at him with huge, brown eyes.

“Dean?” Sam called out. “The demon’s dead but there’s sirens coming. We gotta _go_.”

Cas burst into the room, putting his eyes on Adam. He frowned and then slumped. “I can’t sense anything,” he said. “I’d hoped I would.”

“Yeah, but the demon was going after him,” Dean pointed out. “So he’s probably your brother, right?”

“Most likely,” Cas said, nodding. He frowned down at Adam and then held his hands out expectantly.

“Seriously?” Dean said. “We’ve gotta leave the kid here for social services, Cas, you can’t go getting attached.”

“Absolutely _not_ ,” Cas said, his face going almost angel-scary. “I will not leave my brother in the hands of your social services, especially when he’s inhabiting a vessel of color. _I know what they do to children, Dean_.” His eyes were hard, but pleading, and Dean felt his resolve crumble in the face of an angry puppy of an ex-angel.

“Oh my _God_ ,” Dean said, staring up at the ceiling in exasperation. He could hear the sirens now, getting closer; they had _maybe_ two minutes to get out of there. He cast his eyes around the room, spotting an already-packed diaper bag, a can of formula, and a half-full bottle on the changing table, and he shoved the baby at Cas. “Support the neck,” he said, dashing toward the diaper bag and snagging it. “Come on, Cas, if you’re gonna play dad, _act_ like one.” He grabbed the formula and bottle too, before turning. Cas was staring at him. “ _Go_ , for Christ’s sake!” he said.

Cas blinked, staring down at the baby in his hands, before turning on his heel and marching out of the place.

“Why does Cas have the baby,” Sam said, real casual-like, as if they _weren’t_ leaving a crime scene with a kidnapped baby. Like this was everyday stuff for them - although to be fair this _wasn’t_ a first in their line of work.

“Because Castiel has decided that he has unfulfilled maternal instincts,” Dean quipped as they darted past the living room. He looked in, eyeballing Adam’s dead parents.

 _Almost_ -dead. Keisha got a look at Cas, carrying Adam, before the light died from her eyes, and _Dean_ -

Yeah, Dean was sentimental enough to be glad that was the last thing she saw: her baby being rescued.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

“I swear to _God_ , I failed you somehow growing up,” Dean said, staring at the mishmash assortment of crap Sam had come up with.

Their motel room - a new, fresh one in Nashville, because diamonds to dollars _someone_ saw three white guys leaving with a black baby in tow, climbing into a black muscle car driven by an Asian teenager - was littered with the oddest assortment of baby shit Dean had ever seen.

Baby _stuff_. The shit was safely contained in a rolled-up diaper, changed not even an hour before.

“ _What_? I don’t know what babies need,” Sam said, frowning.

“Okay, but like, basic shit, Sammy,” Dean replied, nudging a pile of way-too-big foot pajamas, liberated from a Goodwill. “Like, half of these clothes won’t fit him, you didn’t get any formula or diapers or bottles, and _we need a car seat._ ”

“ _Why_ do we need a car seat? We should turn him over to family services,” Kevin objected, from his spot by the window - as far away from Cas and Adam as he could get and still be in the room. “I hate to be the smart one - actually, that’s wrong, I _love_ it - but we’re not really equipped to be carting a baby around.”

“Okay, look, I know Baby’s not some yuppie safety-guru hybrid, but she’s got _seat belts_ ,” Dean objected.

“That’s _not_ what I meant,” Kevin replied. He turned in his chair to regard the oldest Winchester. “I mean, we’re hunters. The kid goes _insane_ when Sam or I comes near, and none of us is parents.”

They were quiet for several seconds, and then Castiel and Sam began talking at the same time.

“I _refuse_ to let the Tennessee division of family services have _my brother_ ,” Cas was saying, vehemently.

“Okay, but to be fair, Dean basically raised me from the age of _four_ ,” Sam was saying. His voice was reasonable.

“Hey, don’t pin this on _me_ ,” Dean said, jabbing his finger at Sam and talking over Cas, who was now ranting about foster homes and the low adoption rate for black children, which - how did he even _know_ that shit? “ _Cas_ is the one who wants to go all Daddy Day Care. I’m just an advisor.”

Adam decided that this would be an excellent time to start wailing. Dean couldn’t really blame him: it was loud, Sam was a gassy, _smelly_ motherfucker, and Cas hadn’t burped him since he’d finished his bottle on the road, which is something he _distinctly_ remembered having to figure out with Sam when both of them were basically toddlers.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Dean snapped. He snagged the closest towel he could find out of the bathroom, draped it on his shoulder, and took the baby from Castiel.

“Dean --” Cas began.

“Don’t be a jackass, he just needs to burp,” Dean said. Sighing, he laid the infant against his shoulder and tapped him on the back. Adam immediately quieted, burying his face into Dean’s neck, and in response, Dean flushed.

“Okay, no, that’s fucking adorable,” Kevin interjected. He was digging in his pockets for his phone.

“Don’t _even_ try it,” Dean said, pointing at the prophet with his free hand.

“No way, I need photographic evidence of how badass Dean Winchester _actually_ is,” Kevin replied.

The resultant picture, Dean had to admit, _was_ kind of hilarious - Dean looked furious and flustered, Adam was curled up against him contentedly, and Castiel looked torn between worried and relieved (an expression that just resembled constipation) behind him.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

The bunker, they discovered, had a particular kind of acoustics that, outside of the bedrooms, rendered any sort of baby monitoring devices moot. Adam’s particular tone of vocals resonated throughout the bunker to the point that Kevin threatened to burn the place down if they didn’t clean out one of the spare rooms for the baby to sleep in.

They weren’t _keeping_ him. Dean kept telling himself this, even as he drove to the Wal-Mart in nearby Hastings, Nebraska, with Castiel to pick out a proper car seat/carrier/stroller set and to stock up on diapers and formula (he ignored the dirty looks the two of them got from the cashier, because she one hundred percent had the wrong idea).

He definitely chanted it to himself two weeks later when, on their monthly trip to the Omaha Costco, he got a pallet of Enfamil on discount while Castiel tried to look manly as he perused onesies.

He somehow managed to convince himself, even a month later, that they were _absolutely_ going to be taking Adam to Child Protective Services at some point, once they’d located Keisha and William’s closest relatives (they’d been only children and both of their respective sets of parents were dead, so this was proving to be a difficult task). That the main room now sported a playpen and they’d invested in a collapsible porta-crib that fit in the Impala trunk when needed, well, Dean conveniently ignored that.

It wasn’t until they’d had him for two months, and Sam suggested that Dean and Cas stick around the bunker to care for Adam, that he realized this might be a more permanent situation.

“What?” he said, dumbfounded.

“Look,” Sam said, sitting across from him, his huge hands spread out placatingly. “Kevin still needs more training in the field, and he’ll actually listen to _me_. Meantime, we can spread the word in the community, have everyone keep an ear out for someone who might have angelic grace that doesn’t belong to them, _and_ keep looking for more remote relatives to stick him with. But he likes Cas the best, and you after him, and we _can’t_ just leave Cas here by himself with the baby.”

Yeah, cuz that would end in disaster. It wasn’t that Cas was _completely_ helpless, it was just that he didn’t have the instincts that most human beings came equipped with when it came to caring for babies.

Sam bit his lip. “ _And_ it’s pointless to bring him on hunts. He’ll get sick, or hurt. He should stay here.”

Dean sighed.

“Yeah, okay, Sammy,” he said, giving in. He had to admit, the idea of sticking around home base was a little bit appealing, if only because he could (theoretically) sleep in. Assuming Adam didn’t have other ideas. “But _keep looking_. I ain’t interested in being a stay-at-home dad.”

Sam snorted.

Kevin showed up later that day with a pickup truck. Dean couldn’t pry out of him where he’d acquired it, but when Sam and him left two days later, to chase down a potential angelic lead in Boise, the Impala stayed parked in front of the bunker.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

Lebanon, Kansas had a mere 300 people residing within its city limits, and Dean got the idea that maybe they’d counted some assorted livestock in the last census. When he ran out of something _small_ he could make the ten-minute trip into town, but the vast majority of their shopping came from once-weekly trips to the Wal-Mart in Hastings.

It became a Saturday tradition quickly, and by the time they’d had Adam for four months, Cas had even managed to suss out the location of a toddler playpark that they visited in between the morning shopping trip at Wal-Mart and lunch, and the afternoon spent digging around the local Goodwill clearance bins for clothes for Cas and Adam.

It was creepily domestic and Dean didn’t like to think about it too hard; instead, he taught Cas how to properly play with an infant that was only just learning to crawl and hold its head upright. Once the ex-angel had learned this important knowledge, he spent time with Adam like it was his _job_.

Dean was therefore left to interact with the parents that were usually scattered around at the park; at first they’d been suspicious and hostile, which considering where this was, he wasn’t too surprised. After a month solid of coming to the park every Saturday - Cas was insistent on the trip, because soon it would be winter and cold and Adam wouldn’t get any fresh air - some of the mothers had warmed up to Dean and started talking to him.

He’d just finished telling the hilarious story of how Dean had to have Cas buzz his head with the clippers while Adam watched, to let the infant know that the clippers wouldn’t hurt him, and how Dean had held back every wince as Cas cut too close, and how terrible his hair had looked for the two weeks following, when one of the other women patted him on the shoulder kindly.

“I wasn’t too sure about you two,” she said, smiling. “But you’ve done good with him. I’m proud of you.”

With that, she walked away, and Dean realized (after a moment of staring after her with his jaw agape) that she’d mistaken Dean and Cas for a gay couple with an adoptive son.

That stuck with Dean for a few days, and he was maybe a little bit quieter around the bunker than he normally would be, but Cas didn’t bring it up, so Dean figured it was probably best left alone.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

“The cashier at the co-op thinks we’re a couple,” Cas commented, a few days later.

Dean blinked. “Okay.” He reached for Adam’s favorite toy, a stuffed bunny-angel that Cas absolutely _hated_.

“When we got gas today.” Cas was changing Adam; Dean had finally broken down and gotten a changing table, and Cas was _delighted_ with it. Dean had gladly given him diaper-changing duties, but in exchange _he_ had to wash the laundry and stuffed toys, which he was now gathering in a metal bin he’d found near the dungeon.

“Not really explaining anything there, Cas,” Dean said. The bunny, sure enough, had slobber and spit-up all along the side, so into the bin it went.

“When I went in to pay, she asked how my partner was doing,” Cas replied. He was staring at the diaper with an intensity that Dean thought should be reserved for hunting lore and potential demons, but Cas was as meticulous about diapering Adam as he was about everything else he did.

Dean snorted. “I’m not sure if I should be offended that she thinks I wouldn’t put a ring on it, or flattered that she thinks I can score hotties.”

He could hear Cas rolling his eyes from all the way across the room.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

Sam and Kevin tried to help as much as they could, but the younger Winchester hadn’t been kidding when he said Adam didn’t like him. He didn’t fuss as much as he used to when confronted with Sam, but he still wasn’t entirely comfortable around him, let alone when being held by him.

Cas felt that it was the remnants of his angelic grace, registering the presence of Sam’s fractional demonic blood. Dean told him to shut his cake hole, _clearly_ Adam just didn’t like giants.

Kevin told them they were both stupid and that Adam barely ever saw the two of them, no _wonder_ he didn’t like them as much.

The prophet may not enjoy the actual _practice_ of taking care of the baby, but he was a _gold mine_ when it came to infant research; whenever he and Sam were home, it was baby-info-overload. It was from him that Dean and Castiel learned they should have started Adam on solid foods at six months (hey, they were only a month late), and that the best food to do that with was avocados. Sam was inordinately pleased with this; Dean grumbled about it because one, avocados were fucking expensive, and two, they tasted like _snot_. Still, they were considered the best, full of nutrients and easy to mush up.

That didn’t stop Dean from eyeballing the soft baby foods selection at Wal-Mart the next time they made a trip into Hastings.

The variety of baby food available these days was impressive; when Dean had been helping John feed Sammy, it had been like five flavors, all in tiny glass screw-top jars, and one type of plastic-coated metal spoon. Now, the possibilities were _endless_.

“D’ya think Adam’s a peas and carrots kinda kid?” Dean asked, squinting at the label of the plastic food container he was holding up.

“I think Adam is seven months old and incapable of telling the _difference_ between peas and carrots,” Cas replied, easily. Adam had just grown out of his three-to-six month old baby clothes, and Cas was sorting through a bin of clearance toddler outfits.

“Those won’t fit him,” Dean said. He set the peas and carrots back down on the shelf. “Not for like another six months.”

Cas shrugged and moved on to another bin; Dean, however, had spotted his infant holy grail and was staring at it in awe.

“Dean?” Cas said, glancing back. He took in what Dean was staring at and his face went incredulous. “ _Seriously_?”

“Cas, they make apple pie. For _babies_ ,” Dean said, amazed.

“Unbelievable,” Cas muttered.

“You tell him, honey,” said a woman from down the aisle.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

The next time Kevin and Sam were back in the bunker, they came with good news and bad news.

The bad news was that the great-aunt they’d been chasing down had died several months before Keisha and William’s murder, _and_ their friend Anabiel had tried and failed to figure out the spell to track grace. She was going to try some other ingredients but so far, no dice.

The good news was that the police in Lebanon, Tennessee had closed the Moore’s casefile, somehow managing to miss the fact that the baby was missing. Police incompetence at its best, Dean declared. Either way, none of them had (yet another) felony warrant out for him.

Also, Sam came back with a baby monitor set.

“Found it for cheap at a flea market,” he said, grinning as he presented it to Dean. “It has two receivers so both you and Cas can each have one.”

“Oh _good_ ,” Cas said. He grabbed the box, intercepting it from one brother to the next. “I keep waking up thinking I’ve heard him in the middle of the night. This will clear things up nicely.”

Dean squinted at them. “So what, these are basically walkie talkies?”

Sam grinned even further, if that was possible. “Basically, yeah.”

Two days later, Castiel threatened to kick all of them out of the bunker if Dean didn’t keep stealing the monitor and receivers to scare Cas with.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

Charlie showed up the week of Thanksgiving unannounced, miserable and alone. Dean didn’t ask questions, just showed her to the room he kept cleared out for her (just in case) and added another person to the guest list. Sam and Kevin should be back the next day, with information about Adam’s paternal cousins; Garth and Krissy’s group had their own plans, so that pretty much _completed_ the list.

It was about twelve hours later that she realized there was an infant in the bunker; she stumbled into the main room and blinked in amazement as Cas handed Adam off to Dean before reaching around him to snag the angel bunny off the table and pass it to the infant.

“Whoa,” Charlie said, staring at the scene. “When did you get gay-married and adopt a kid?”

Cas frowned. “We’re _not_ married -” he began.

“Civil partnership?”

Dean sighed. “We’re not _together_ ,” he clarified, gesturing with his free hand. “And it’s a long story. Charlie, meet Adam,” and he held the baby out toward her.

“Oh, God, _no_ ,” she said, waving him off. “Babies and I don’t get along. They’re all fragile and - _breakable_.” Then she turned toward Cas. “Alright, so - who are you, then, if you’re not Dean’s boy-toy?”

“ _Boy-toy?_ ” Dean mouthed at her, incredulously, as Castiel introduced himself.

“Ohhhh, so you’re _Cas_ ,” Charlie said, eyes wide. “I’ve read all about you.” Cas raised his eyebrow, and Dean sighed.

“If we’re gonna talk about those frickin’ books, I’m gonna put Adam down for his nap,” he informed the room at large.

By the time he got back, Charlie was trying to explain the ‘shipping’ phenomenon to a clueless Castiel, and all it took was a single mention of the word ‘destiel’ for Dean to about-face right back into his bedroom.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

Sam and Kevin were snowed in somewhere in North Dakota the week after Christmas, chasing down a renegade angel that they thought might have taken the grace in Tennessee, so Dean, Cas, and Adam celebrated New Year’s with just the three of them. It’d snowed pretty heavily in Lebanon, too, so there wasn’t even any beer to toast with. Cas managed to dig up a bottle of grape juice that Dean was pretty sure had originally been intended for Adam, but he wasn’t gonna complain - at least it wasn’t _water_.

The bunker ran on power that Dean hadn’t quite been able to pinpoint, and he had a vaguely uneasy feeling that it was at least half-magical, but the storm managed to freeze _something_ in the middle of the night. He woke up at about 3 a.m., freezing his ass off and fumbling for the flashlight app on his phone because none of the fucking lights worked.

Cas walked up to him as he tried to tinker with the fuse box, holding Adam close, both of them bundled up into a fuzzy purple bathrobe that Dean suspected had been a woman’s in a past life.

Whatever, Adam seemed to like it.

“What’s wro-o-ong?” Cas asked, his eyes bleary. The last syllable cracked in half because he was yawning; obviously, _he’d_ been sleeping when the power went out too.

“Fuck if I know,” Dean said, slamming the door to the fuse box shut. Adam fussed slightly in his sleep, but quieted down when Cas rocked back and forth on his heels. “I don’t _care_ right now. I just want to _sleep_.”

Dean’s bed was the biggest, so they piled Castiel’s extra blanket on top and the two of them curled up around Adam to keep him warm. It didn’t even occur to Dean until midway through the next day - well after the power had mysteriously come back on - that he’d just spent the night cuddled up to Cas.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

The beginning of February was infuriating for several reasons.

One, a comment about cupids and Valentine’s Day from an unaware Kevin had led to Cas storming around the bunker for two days solid, leaving the care of Adam mainly to Dean.

Two, Adam had decided that it was more than time to start trying to talk. It was mostly nonsense syllables but he’d managed to get out a, “Sa!” when he saw Sam, and a “KE!” when he saw Kevin, and both men had flushed and asked to hold him almost immediately.

Dean _wasn’t_ jealous, absolutely not, _no way_.

Third, he was reminded (after the fiasco regarding cupids) that Valentine’s Day was coming up and here he was, single, alone, and most annoyingly - _horny_. He hadn’t been laid since before Purgatory, which had been - _God_ \- almost three years ago now.

Dean was pretty sure he qualified as a virgin at this point.

Anyway, once he was reminded of that, he spent several days huffing around the bunker, getting his revenge on Castiel by forcing the ex-angel to care for the infant on his own.

By the time Valentine’s Day had actually arrived the two of them had arrived at a sort of tentative peace, which was good because Kevin and Sam got a call from Anabiel, saying that she’d finally worked out the last bits of the grace-tracking spell.

The two of them left the bunker quickly - Dean suspected their haste was a reaction to Castiel and his’ general surliness, and he couldn’t _really_ blame them - armed with a lock of Adam’s hair. If he was an angel, they’d know by this time next week.

The night of Valentine’s Day, Dean considered driving up to Hastings, or even just into Lebanon, for a beer. Then he took in the scene in front of him - Cas, holding Adam in his lap, focusing on cartoons with him - and decided, yeah, he’d rather stay home.

Carefully, he didn’t examine those feelings too hard.

They put Adam to bed at about seven, and Dean put on a movie neither of them had to think about too much, and they very quickly got tired. Dean was in bed by nine.

This, he thought, must be what getting old felt like.

Four hours later he bolted up in bed, alarm racing down his spine, and he had to calm his heart - it was just Adam, fussing over the baby monitor. Dean stumbled out of bed, blinking sleep out of his eyes and heading toward Adam’s room.

Cas was standing over the crib, holding a bottle down to the baby, his eyes just as sleep-filled, and Dean came to stand next to him.

“You got this?” he mumbled. Cas nodded sleepily, and Dean leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, and stumbled back to his room.

It wasn’t until he’d almost fallen asleep that what had just happened slammed into him, and yeah - there was no way he was getting back to sleep tonight.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

They didn’t talk about it.

When Sam and Kevin came back two days later, with the information that Anabiel was going to perform the spell and call them, they didn’t talk about it.

They didn’t talk about it when Sam asked about how they were being strangely formal with each other, nor when Kevin asked if Cas was on his man-period (and Dean had to admit that Kevin was _maybe_ spending too much time around Dean himself).

It took Adam, as usual, to spur his two father-figures into action.

He’d been talking nonsense words for about a week, and Dean thought all of those months hanging out with other toddlers in Hastings _had_ to have caught up with them for this shit to happen. Cas was feeding him - they’d just got a high-chair last trip into town, actually, because Adam was finally capable of sitting up unsupported - when Dean walked into the kitchen. Adam sort of gestured at Dean with a big, gummy smile on his face and exclaimed, “Da! Da!”

Dean blinked. “ _What_?” he croaked.

Sam had a huge smirk on his face. So did Kevin.

Then Adam turned to Cas, grin even wider. “Pa! _Pa_!”

Cas blinked.

Kevin and Sam started to laugh.

“ _Not a word_ ,” Dean said, turning and walking back out of the room.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

Dean had sort of barricaded himself in the dungeon, digging through old boxes and looking for weird, freaky shit. Ostensibly he was cataloguing things. Realistically, he hadn’t barricaded himself well enough.

At least, that’s what he told himself when Cas found him, about an hour later.

“Dean -” Cas began.

“ _Really_ don’t want to talk about it, Cas,” Dean warned him. He’d almost startled at Castiel’s voice; as it was, he was in the particularly undignified position of on his hands and knees, half-under a shelf, ass in the air. At least, he thought begrudgingly, Cas had an excellent view.

Cas sighed. “ _Dean_ ,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”

“I’m kind of busy,” Dean tried. He was absolutely not busy; the box he’d been chasing was completely empty and while that should probably bother him more - empty boxes in this place had a way of being trouble - it couldn’t do an adequate job of distracting him from... _this_.

Whatever _this_ was.

“No, you’re not, you’ve been staring at nothing for five minutes and your knees are probably going to get sore,” Cas replied. There was a shuffling noise, and then something grabbed Dean’s ankle. He flailed for a second, faceplanting into the bottom shelf and rolling as the something - Cas, he determined a second later - pulled him along the floor, getting him dusty and dirty and really, _really_ annoyed.

“What the fuck,” Dean said, coughing some dust up and peering up at Castiel. The other man was standing above him, arms crossed, and a pissy expression on his face and Dean was absolutely _not_ half-hard at the sight. _Nope_.

“You’re acting like a child,” Cas said. He stopped and considered. “I _think_ you’re acting like a child. My knowledge of the development of pre-adolescent children is restricted to infanthood at the moment, but I believe this is an accurate assessment of your behavior.”

“ _Wow_ , Cas, you really know how to compliment a guy,” Dean said, rolling his eyes. He pulled himself up, tugging on one of the shelves for leverage, until he managed to be sitting instead of laying flat on his back.

Castiel stared down at him like he couldn’t actually tell whether Dean was being serious or not, which was ridiculous because Cas had known Dean for _way_ too long to make that mistake by now, especially considering the fact that they’d been _living together_ for almost two years.

Oh. _Wow_.

Dean blinked. They’d been living together for almost two years - and since they’d picked up Adam last April (wow, nine months ago), it had been mostly the Dean and Cas show, featuring Adam Moore with occasional guest appearances from Sam Winchester and Kevin Tran. If this were _actually_ a sitcom, the punchline would be that everyone mistook them for a couple all of the time. If this were a _romcom_ , well -

Jesus Christ. He was an _idiot_.

He pushed himself up off the floor. Cas had crossed his arms and was glaring down at him, but the moment he made a move to stand, the ex-angel reached down and helped him up. Which was really just a shining metaphor for their entire relationship, really.

“Cas -” he started. Except Cas was angry.

“ _No_ ,” Castiel said. He pushed his way into Dean’s personal space with a disregard he hadn’t had in years. “You’ve tiptoed around the subject for days. It’s _exhausting_ , and I never know which answer is the _right_ one, but I didn’t make the mistake, this is _your_ fault, _you_ kissed _me_ , I shouldn’t have to suffer because you haven’t figured out what you want, Dean.” Cas looked a little wild, and Dean got the idea that maybe he needed to let the other man have his say before he interjected. “I can’t sit around waiting for you to make up your mind, I’m tired of it, I’m pretty sure _Sam and Kevin_ are tired of it, I’m eighty percent certain _Charlie_ was tired of it the one time she was here, and Adam’s going to pick up on it eventually, so can we _please_ figure this out _now_?”

“You would have _failed_ high school English,” Dean marveled.

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas said, his frown deepening.

“Sorry, just - wow, that was a _lot_ of run-on sentences. Sorry! Sorry,” Dean said, holding his hands up. He glanced sheepishly toward Cas, who looked even more forbidding than usual. Which, you know, was saying something.

His hands were still mid-air, which was perfect because it meant there was just a little adjustment and his hands were cupping Castiel’s face. Cas looked annoyed, but confused.

“I’d apologize for being a dick, but you _really_ oughta know that by now,” Dean informed him.

Cas quirked his eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Dean agreed, and then he pressed their lips together.

The tension melted out of Cas, and the pressure Dean hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying around, buried deep in his chest, disappeared. They sagged, exchanging tentative, breathy kisses and clinging to each other like the world depended on it.

There was a knock at the basement door. “Guys?” It was Sam.

Dean pulled away just a few millimeters from Cas, still so close that when he spoke, his lips brushed the other man’s. “Busy, Sam,” Dean said.

“Uh, yeah, I can _see_ that,” Sam said. “But there’s a naked Cupid in our entryway and he’s demanding to talk to both of you.”

Dean sighed and pressed one last kiss to Castiel’s lips. “He got a name?”

“Do you think if he was someone we knew I’d be down here interrupting - _this_?” Sam said, gesturing. “Fucking _finally_ , by the way, but still - he says it’s important.”

Cas snorted, but the two of them turned to head back upstairs. Sam, being the gentleman that he was - Dean raised him right, after all - didn’t mention their entwined fingers.

Kevin, on the other hand, was a _dick_ , and taunted them about it for like two weeks.

 

**\+ + + + +**

 

They got about two steps into the main room when Castiel froze in place.

“Pahaliah,” he said, slowly, regarding the naked man in the room.

The angel, way too solemn for a cupid if Dean had any say in the subject, inclined his head in Castiel’s direction. “Brother,” he said, and _whoa_ , that was a deep voice.

“You still have your grace,” Cas said, and he sounded hurt but awed.

“Only by chance,” Pahaliah said. He stood absolutely still where he was. “Those of us who had business on the earth - a great deal of the cherubim and no small amount of the seraphim - we retained our grace when Metatron closed the Gates.”

Cas blinked.

“It is my grace you have been seeking, these last months,” Pahaliah continued. “I tore it out and left it in a small town in Tennessee, to protect myself. Many of us made the same choice, retrieving it after the customary human gestation period to throw Metatron off.”

“Your grace - you mean -”

Pahaliah smiled. “I spent the intervening nine months seeking out our graceless brethren, and those of us who still had grace to collect on. We’re fighting back, Castiel.”

“You’re going up against Metatron?” Dean asked, excitement leaking into his voice.

“We are,” Pahaliah said. He eyed the two of them. “I wanted to come and put you at ease, brother - the infant in your care is not of the Host, but he is a beautiful soul nonetheless.”

“We’re fighting?” Castiel said, blinking.

“You are not fighting,” the cupid said, gently. “You’ve done your fighting, Castiel. You know as well as I do that there is no chance that your grace survived that spell. It is your time to rest.” He smiled again. “Our big brother said to think of it as a vacation.”

Cas froze. “Our -” he whispered.

“The messenger,” was the cryptic answer. And then he froze, listening to something none of them could hear. “We will be in touch, but rest assured - nothing is required of you at this time, any of you. I must go; the assault begins soon. Watch the skies.”

The sound of wings - a sound Dean hadn’t heard in very nearly two years - filled the bunker. And then Pahaliah was gone.

“Whoa,” Dean said.

“Big brother?” Sam asked. Castiel hunched his shoulders.

“That can only mean one of the archangels,” he replied. “Raphael would have, no doubt, come to slaughter us, and he is most definitely dead; the very same goes for Michael and Lucifer, and he did specify the messenger, which means -”

“Gabriel,” Dean finished, blinking. Sam looked at him oddly. “ _Why_ are you always so surprised when I know things? I read!”

Kevin looked up from the laptop; it was a testament to how used to weird shit the prophet had become that the appearance of a strange cupid in his living room didn’t even faze him. “Gabriel? I thought he was dead.”

“We thought so too,” Sam said, frowning. He’d never gotten along with or _liked_ Gabriel, not since Mystery Spot, and Dean got the feeling he’d _preferred_ the archangel dead.

“We’ll get answers, some day,” Castiel said. He picked up Adam, who had been fussing in his high chair. “Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait for Gabriel or one of his followers to show up; I seem to have lost my calling card.” He looked _supremely_ annoyed at this.

“Okay, wait, so Adam isn’t an angel,” Kevin said, turning toward Cas. “Does that mean we’re going to give him to CPS?”

Dean’s reaction was knee-jerk and instantaneous. “What? No!” he exclaimed.

Four pairs of eyes - Sam, Kevin, Cas, and Adam (probably from shock at the loud noise) turned to regard him, and he suddenly felt _very_ defensive. “Charlie can like, a hundred percent, fix it so that Adam is ours, officially. We _can’t_ yank him out of the only home he remembers.”

“Okay, yeah, except you’re a single dude and Cas is a single dude and gay adoption isn’t legal here,” Kevin said, patiently. “And neither is gay marriage. This state wouldn’t acknowledge jack shit.”

“Actually,” Cas began and then he froze.

Dean turned to look at him, eyebrow raised.

“Sorry,” Cas said. “But in the city of Lawrence, homosexual civil unions are a legality. The state doesn’t look _favorably_ on them but for the most part _acknowledges_ them.”

Kevin looked absolutely flabbergasted for all of ten seconds, and then he grinned devilishly.

“So does this mean you two are getting married? Wow, that’s not much of a courtship,” he said, sing-song.

Sam smirked.

Dean sighed and then pulled his phone out. He snaked his other arm around Cas.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked.

“Checking if I still have Missouri’s phone number,” Dean said, rolling his eyes. “If there’s a big fucking gay wedding going down in Lawrence and we don’t invite her, she’ll show anyway and she’ll be _pissed_.”


End file.
